The Brother

$13.95

“Like a lone Eastwood in the midst of a flock of van Dammes.” —Tarmo Jüristo

Winner of the Eduard Vilde Literary Award

The Brother opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of men—men who recently cheated the stranger’s supposed sister out of her inheritance and mother’s estate. Resigned to giving up on her dreams and ambitions, Laila took this swindling in stride, something that Brother won’t stand for. Soon after his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men, motivating them to get their revenge on Brother. Meanwhile, a rat-faced paralegal makes it his mission to discover Brother’s true identity . . .

The first novel of Rein Raud’s to appear in English, The Brother is, in Raud’s own words, a spaghetti western told in poetic prose, simultaneously paying tribute to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco. With its well-drawn characters and quick moving plot, it takes on more mythic aspects, lightly touching on philosophical ideas of identity and the ruthless way the world is divided into winners and losers. (Read an Excerpt)

Translated from the Estonian by Adam Cullen

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About the Author: Rein Raud is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and several collections of short fiction. He’s also a scholar in Japanese studies and has translated several works of Japanese into Estonian. One of his short pieces appeared in Best European Fiction 2015.

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“The Brother is like a piece of music played in a sunny room. And only later you realize that the descriptions, as if out of this world, the turns of the story, and its single phrases have been deeply engraved in your mind.” —Marius Burokas